Soviet partisans

The Soviet partisans was a vast partisan movement that existed from 1941 to 1944 in the occupied Soviet Union during World War II. On 3 July 1941, the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin called for partisans to spring up behind Axis lines during Operation Barbarossa, but it would not be until later in the year that the partisans did so. The partisans operated in scattered bands in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, and the Germans executed 10,500 accused partisans in Belarus for killing two German troops. In the spring of 1942, Stalin imposed a centralized structure on the partisans, with Red Army officers, CPSU party officials and the NKVD taking command of the partisans and shooting refractant partisans. The partisans would operate in "partisan regions" in the woods and marshlands, and 60% of Belarus was under partisan control during the winter of 1942-1943, while the partisans also controlled the Porkhov region to the south of Leningrad and the forests around Bryansk. In Orel, 18,000 partisans took over 500 villages and airstrips and kept occupied areas in touch with Moscow.

From the beginning of 1943, the partisans began a "rail war" against Nazi Germany, carrying out 1,092 attacks in June 1943 (including 298 trains damaged and 44 bridges blown up). The partisans struck at night to stay under the cover of darkness, and they laid more mines and destroyed even longer sections of track during their night attacks. In 1944, the partisan movement ended as the Red Army liberated the last occupied regions of the USSR, and many of the partisans were then absorbed into the Red Army.

The partisan movement initially operated independently from the Kremlin, with the partisans being independent fighting brigades called otriads. 10% of partisans were Jews, many of whom were persecuted due to their religion and/or ethnicity. The Germans declared that, "where there is a partisan, there is a Jew, and where there is a Jew, there is a partisan" in 1941, and they massacred whole villages accused of supporting the partisans. The Soviet partisans themselves would later be accused of atrocities against captured Germans and against Poles, including the Naliboki massacre and the Koniuchy massacre.